Miss Nistiana's Maid Dragon
by Ink And Blade
Summary: DEAD Life has a strange way taking even the simplest of plans and turning them sideways. When all a young girl wanted was to escape the inanities of Cyrodillic nobility to pursue her passion for magic, she expected having to deal with the cold, perhaps a wolf or two along the way, but a self important dragon with agendas of its own? May the Divines have mercy. Co-Author: Nogoodnms
1. Chapter 1

**Miss Nistiana's Maid Dragon**

 **Chapter 1**

The cold had always bothered her. That was how it had been since a young age. As a child she hated how it seeped into her bones, and how it sucked out all of her desire to strain herself any more than absolutely necessary. This dislike had not changed over the years, and subsequently at this time, she was not happy. How these Nords could survive in this Draugr's frozen teat's excuse for a province she would never understand.

She rubbed her hands together and blew into them as she tried to summon some fire to send a breath of warmth into her aching body. Who ever knew running away from home would involve so much _walking_? It would have been a better idea to take a carriage or transportation of some sorts, but with the civil war going on, drivers were less willing to enter the province. To have fear of being stopped and having your goods seized, perhaps even your life, was not an irrational one in this day and age. With her options limited and her goal clear, she had taken the only path available to her.

That path did not have nearly as many inns as she would have liked. Dagon's accursed backside, she needed to learn spells to cast bigger fires than this puny flame. A fire cloak spell sounded just perfect, but even a flame atronach floating about as a portable oven would have sufficed.

Of course, that wasn't enough for this dreadful day. She had lost the path she was so closely following and had found herself in the middle of this damn forest. It was as if she were drowning in this sea of pines, and the incessant snow wasn't helping. It was coming down ever harder now and there was no shelter in sight. While she was a mage of fair skill, she couldn't construct a shelter out of nothing. Just a tiny fireball and a few other spells that seemed near-useless now, apart from the tiny orb of light that hovered above her.

She didn't even bring many supplies with her on the outset, so she had been stuck foraging and hunting to supplement her ever-dwindling store of rations. She was trying to travel light and did not give herself many bags to use, so there was not much space for any food that would rot in a matter of hours. Living off the wilds was not a novel experience, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant one. She was beginning to miss her old bed, her old meals, and the wonderful place in the world she had back in Cyrodiil.

 _That's behind me now._ She thought. _What's ahead is the rest of my life. The College._

She heard a rapid shuffling through the snow, a little ways in front of her. Paws impacted the ground, and as the sound grew closer she realized that something was approaching her. She grimaced. _Of course, now is the best time possible for me to be attacked by wolves._ She probably looked like the perfect prey, a lost, shivering young girl alone in a forest. A pack of wolves would take her down easily. Well, by the Divines, she wasn't going down without a fight.

She readied a spell of ice shards to impale them upon and prepared to launch at as soon as the sound got within visible range of her Light spell. She hunched, body tense and hands at the ready as the patter grew louder and louder. She drew her arm back, ready to hurl the ice spear into the brush. Without warning, a small doe lunged forth and raced past her. On instinct she let the shards burst forth, but they impacted nothing, her reflexes too slow. She cursed under her breath as the sounds drew further away. _That could have been dinner..._

She paused for a moment. _No reason it can't still be._

Her eyes ravaged the ground as if it were a beautiful lover, scanning for the hoofprints that marked the doe's trail, and as soon as she found it she cautiously began making her way through the forest. The trees and brush was thick, and she lost the trail several times, but she'd be damned if she'd eat more of that blasted salted pork for the seventh meal in a row!

It was getting closer, she could feel it. She was not normally one to be incredibly carnivorous, but the idea of tasting something different was so enticing that her mind could not help but call up images of her gobbling down such delicious meat. She would skin and butcher the deer, gather up some twigs and branches, get a small fire going, and make herself a satisfying dinner for the night. In the morning she would set off to find the path again. The daylight would be a boon to her efforts.

But for the time being, that fantasy would remain as such. As she moved around a tree, she discovered a clearing that normally would be quite vacant. At this moment in time, however, the space was very prominently occupied. The resident who happened to be occupying this space was none other than a dragon. An honest to Divines, living, breathing dragon. Though considering its state, that last descriptor might not be applicable for long.

It was a green monstrosity, taking up more space than the average commoner's house. It was riddled with wounds, from bleeding gashes to blackened burns and obvious bite marks. Bite marks she could sink her arm into. Its belly rose and sank with every labored breath. Pale yellow horns, like branches, came off of the side of its head, roughly where its ears would be.

It didn't take much for her to stop moving in that instant. The cold that had bothered her so much was enough of an issue as is, but at this point that cold was like the river stream back home compared to the frozen shock that hit her. It was a panic response, she could tell that much. She was having a lot of trouble simply acknowledging that. It was all she could do to make a step towards the beast. However, she wasn't in control of herself enough to soften the step, and the snow crunched loudly beneath her feet.

There was a deep rumble, deep enough for her to feel it in her chest. The dragon opened one eye, a band of gold wrapped around a circle of red, about as large as her torso and regarded her with the frigid disdain one might reserve for a rodent found in their kitchen.

" _My last moments, with a human… How fitting."_

She nearly had to bite her tongue to break out of the mental cage that she had been put in. The dragon was now talking to her, and she could understand it. Words weren't coming together right in her mind, but she knew that she had to say something. If nothing else, it was only polite.

"H-Hello." She barely managed to stutter out. "A-are you alright?" Curses, she felt like a child again, barely able to get a sentence out to anyone that wasn't her immediate family. It wasn't surprising, as dragons were beings of incredible age and wisdom. She would definitely appear as an infant to this creature.

" _Alright?"_ The dragon let out an incredulous snort that blew away some of the snow under its head. " _Do I look alright to you?"_

"N-no." She quickly replied, and then got a hold of herself as she attempted to craft a better response than that. "B-but maybe, as a dragon, maybe you have some sort of rapid healing ability that I don't know about. This, to you, may be only the equivalent of a sprained ankle to me. I-I'm not sure and, honestly..." She trailed off, realizing that she had been babbling out of control.

The silence began to stretch as the dragon only kept staring at her. She felt a rising urge to fidget, though it also could have been her common sense telling her to flee. She could hardly tell anymore.

" _You understand me?"_ The dragon finally spoke with tangible incredulity. " _A blubbering infant like you is dragonborn?"_ The dragon's slit-like iris narrowed in rage as it raised its head to face her, fangs bared. " _I WILL NOT SURRENDER MY SOUL TO YOU!"_

She moved back, not entirely of her own volition as the shout had pushed her several steps, holding her hands up in a placating gesture, her eyes widening as the fear that had seemed to draw back momentarily hit her even harder. "W-wait! What do you mean? I can't be the dragonborn! That doesn't make any sense!"

" _I can feel it in you now!"_ The dragon yelled, making her hair whip back. " _You have the soul of a dragon! I won't allow you to live long enough to take me!"_

The situation was rapidly spiraling out of control, and she could see her imminent demise reflected in the eyes of that majestic beast. She didn't know what to do, but clearly this dragon wanted her to die. She had to stop that. She knew that, despite all the wounds that the dragon had sustained, it could easily kill her with a swipe of a claw. There was no way that she could fight back and actually kill it herself, so she had to make herself seem like someone not worth killing. She had to make the dragon understand that she was on its side. She was about to do something incredibly stupid, but seeing as the whole situation was an absurdity in and of itself, there was nothing wrong with reaching for unorthodox solutions.

Mustering up every bit of courage and magicka she possibly could, she began sprinting toward the closest wound of the dragon she could see and channelled a Restoration spell into her palms. Without taking much notice to any sort of reaction that the dragon would have, she dived forward and slammed her hands on the open wound, pushing forward as much magicka as she could to try to heal the gaping hole in the side of the dragon. She was hoping that, somehow, her feelings would be communicated through the magicka she pushed forward.

" _What in Akatosh's name are you doing?"_ The dragon demanded, curling its neck until its snout was almost touching her, that enormous eye staring at her from within arms reach.

"I..." She took in a deep breath she drew up more magicka to try to keep the process going for as long as possible. "I don't want you to die. I don't care about your soul. That's..." She was getting a headache and her bones were beginning to ache even more than before. From what she could see, though, the wound was beginning to knit close and the bleeding was becoming less prominent. Her hands were getting covered in the blood, though, which was going to be a hassle to wash off.

" _Are..."_ The dragon seemed stumped for words. " _Are you healing me in hopes that I would grant you mercy? Foolish mortal, nothing is stopping me from devouring you once you finish."_

"If I'm not here to hurt you, do you have a reason to eat me?" That was the best she could come up with. Her mind was wearing itself out as the wound stitched itself back together. "I can't promise you I taste very good either, I've been eating a lot of salted pork these past few days." Even in her exhaustion, memories of that terrible taste brought a great feeling of nausea up to her throat. It was very tempting to throw the rest of that out.

She must have been getting tired faster than she thought, but she could swear the dragon snorted in a less than dignified manner. " _Disgusting mortals, putting those damned rocks everywhere. How can you bear to stomach it? Then again, you mortals are too stupid to know what's good for you."_

She couldn't help but let out a small giggle of her own, though she stopped it as fast as she could. "Well, this stupid mortal knows that being eaten isn't very good for her, so how could you think you know what's good for me better than I do?"

" _I know better because you're mortal and stupid and I'm a dragon."_ It stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well, then..." Her hands fell from the front limb. "If you know what's best for me, then I can safely put my life in your hands." The waking world drew away from her and she dropped to the cold ground, her mind unable to take any further strain of trying to heal the dragon.

" _It was there from the start, you-"_ The dragon stopped talking as it realized the human was unconscious. " _Mortal?"_

The dragon slowly raised itself on its legs, noting the lances of pain it should have experienced had dulled considerably. It turned slowly, more to keep from reopening any wounds than anything, until it was facing the body in the snow.

Letting out a snort, the dragon lowered its snout and nudged the mortal. " _Get up."_

The body remained unresponsive.

It tried again. " _Get up, this is my clearing."_

Again, the mortal remained oblivious to its efforts.

" _If you don't get up, I will just lie down on top of you."_ The dragon threatened, glaring menacingly.

A drop of drool formed at the edge of the human's mouth and started a path down its cheek.

" _Very well!"_ The dragon exclaimed, stepping over the human and lowering its body. It kept still for several seconds before pulling back and lowering its head to glare directly at the mortal. " _Next time I will do it! Don't test me!"_

The mortal remained unmoved.

The dragon sighed, blowing away the snow around the human. " _Fine." It_ gently lowered herself down beside the pathetic existence and curled up, coincidentally shielding it from the wind. " _Stupid dragonborn with a stupid, terrible taste and stupid spells."_

At least, with the pain dulled, it'd have an easier time sleeping.

* * *

The world came back to her slowly, giving her eyes time to adjust to the newly-lit forest. The snow was blinding, she didn't even get the chance to crack them open before she shut them again quickly, her brain on fire from the overstimulation. She was unable to stop a groan from escaping her, the back of her head was complaining loudly, probably due to the unceremonious way she had fallen... down...

" _Are you finally awake, mortal?"_ The dragon's voice came from her left. " _For such a small creature you sure do sleep a lot."_

She blinked as much as she could to try to water her eyes up, and smiled. "I knew you wouldn't eat me. You didn't seem like the type." That was untrue, she was actually fairly terrified of the idea of being eaten, but she took a leap of faith that had paid off.

The dragon's head came into her field of vision, glaring down at her. " _Maybe I just wanted you to wake up so I can listen to your screams while I eat you."_

She shook her head. "No, I don't think that's true. I think you're not as scary as you think you are." She looked around her and noticed the dragon had ended up curling around her while she slept. "Thank you for not letting me freeze to death, either." Scooting backwards, she let herself lay against the large hind leg of the dragon.

" _I don't know what you're talking about."_ The dragon replied, voice full of indignation. " _And remove your filthy mortal self from my limb!"_

She sighed, almost with a sort of longing, and lifted herself off of the leg. "You just seemed so comfortable, and I wanted to join in." She looked into the eyes of the dragon and smiled. She felt a sort of security in that moment. Like nothing could hurt her here. There really wasn't much to fear about this dragon. Oh, Divines, she completely forgot her manners.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself this whole time. My name is Ellemaria Nistiana, but you can just call me Elly." She bowed her head to the dragon.

" _As if I'd care what your name is, mortal."_ The dragon seemed to scoff. " _But very well. If you must know, I am the great dragon Tohrusan!"_

"Toh-Ru-San..." She tested the name, and the moment the syllables exited her lips, an alien translation was brought up in her mind. "Your name is Claw-Run-Soft?"

" _Don't befoul my glorious name by translating it to your inferior tongues."_ The dragon glared. " _I am Tohrusan."_

She said the name a few more times, each time using a different intonation so she could taste how it felt on her tongue. "Can I just call you Tohru?" The words came out more confident than she actually felt about the question. She didn't fear Tohrusan any longer, but she didn't want to push away this new... tentative friend that she had made.

" _You have some gall, mortal!"_ The dragon reared its head in apparent outrage. It remained like that for several long moments before slowly lowering. " _Fine."_

Her smile became even brighter at that. "Thank you, Tohru. This inferior human is honored that you would let her sully your name with her tongue." She bowed her head once more, this time with a little more elegance in it. Her blue eyes danced in delight at the byplay between them. This was the most fun she had had in a while.

" _Well, as long as you know your place…"_ Tohru accepted begrudgingly. " _For what reason did you enter my clearing?"_

Before she could even make a semblance of a response, her stomach growled loudly. She blushed intensely. "I was searching for dinner. I didn't want to eat salted pork again." She said, her embarrassment making her draw into herself a little more and speak quietly.

" _Well, I'm all healed up so you can't eat my soul either."_ Tohru added, eyes narrowed at her.

"I wasn't planning to!" She hastily replied. "I... I don't want to eat your soul! I didn't even..." Oh gods above, she was the Dragonborn. It finally hit her full force. She could talk to dragons, understand them, and speak the Words. She had immense power at her fingertips.

" _Are you unwell, mortal?"_ The dragon asked, puzzled by her sudden silence.

"I... I don't want this." She pulled her legs towards her chest, curling up tightly. "I just want to be a good mage. I don't want to be the Dragonborn. Someone else can have it. Please tell me I can give it to someone else, right?" She stared into Tohru's amber eyes, pleading for the dragon to tell her what she wanted to hear.

" _What are you saying?"_ Tohru's monstrous head tilted to the side in genuine confusion. " _You have a dragon's soul. If you weren't a filthy mortal, you would be great like me. Maybe if you try hard enough, you still can be. Why would you want to lose that?"_

She curled up even more tightly. "I don't want to be great. Being great means that people have to look up at me, and I have to be a symbol. Being great means I have to go to the stupid balls and the gatherings. Being great means being used for what I am, not who I am." She shook her head, a melancholy feeling taking hold of her heart. "I ran away from home to get away from those things. I want to be myself, not the Dragonborn."

" _Ha, you foolish mortals truly are foolish!"_ Tohru proclaimed smugly. " _Being great isn't about any of that. When you're great you go where you want regardless of what others say. I don't care if someone tells me to do something I don't wanna do or go somewhere I don't wanna go. And they can't do anything about it, because I'm the great Tohrusan!"_

She smiled again. "Being a dragon sounds great. I'd love to be a dragon." She couldn't help but lean back again. "But being the dragonborn, as a human, means that people are going to stop me from doing what I want. It means I'm unable to be as free as you are, Tohru." She looked at those eyes again. "I can't do what I want. People will expect me to do what they want, and... I don't always have a choice to refuse."

" _But nobody knows you're dragonborn, do they?"_ Tohru asked. " _You can just not tell them. Or wait until you know how to Shout so that you can burn whoever tries to make you go to balls."_

She smiled. It was refreshing, in a way, to hear life from such a simple perspective. "That sounds like a wonderful fantasy, but in the human world, you can't burn people you don't like."

" _Truly? I thought mortal mages did it all the time."_ Tohru said. " _One of the rare times mortals showed some wisdom. We dragons Shout at one another all the time when we don't like each other."_

"No, mages are not supposed to use magic like that. Magic must not be used with the intent to harm others, only with the intent to defend and protect." It was almost a recitation at this point, with how much her tutor had drilled it into her. That had seemed so meaningless, though, when she was hungry and intended to kill and eat the deer.

The dragon sighed in disappointment. " _You need to stop listening to foolish mortals if you want to be a proper dragon."_

Her hunger made itself known once more with a loud stomach growl. She blushed, more lightly this time. "I think the person I need to listen to most is my stomach right now." She mumbled, slowly getting up and stretching.

" _If it's telling you it's okay to eat all those white rocks, then it must not be very smart."_ Tohru said, rising as well. " _And since I'm clearly superior, I shall be the one to take care of you."_

The surprises today were not at an end, it seemed. The green dragon lifted its head, and went still for a moment. It suddenly began to shine with a blinding light, and Elly had to turn her head away for a moment. The leg that she had been leaning on moved away from her, and she fell backwards onto the ground again, covering her eyes from the light. When she managed to see again, she was presented with a very different sight than before.

Where there was once a dragon now stood a woman. She appeared to be dressed exactly the same as Elly, robes that were a dark blue shade just above black, with the hood pooling around her neck, her chest stretching out the robes more than they were used to. Her hair, unlike Elly's slightly dull red hair, was a vivid blonde with red highlights at the end. Her eyes were red with an amber sheen to them. The most peculiar features by far, however, were the twin, almost branch-like yellow horns sticking out of her head and the thick green tail slithering out from under her robes, only barely above ground.

"This isn't a form I like to take, but it makes it harder for me to squish puny mortals by accident." Tohru said, her voice a lilting mezzo soprano that was vastly opposite to the voice Elly had gotten used to.

"...Dragons truly are great." She said, finally.

"I'm glad you understand!" Unlike her dragon form, Tohru's mostly human guise was much easier to read, not at all impaired by the way Tohru seemed incapable of curbing her body language with the way she smiled brightly and clasped her hands in delight. Elly could not help but grin in return, it was so infectious.

"So..." After a long pause, she broke the silence. "I hope you're just as good a hunter in this form as you are as a dragon." Her stomach grumbled quietly as if to agree with that sentiment.

"Ah, worry not! I have just the thing for you!" Tohru turned abruptly and started marching into the forest. "Follow me!"

Well, when a dragon behooves you to follow them, to refuse is to risk death, and Elly had decided she had enough of playing around at Oblivion's Gate to do something like that again. She matched her pace to Tohru and fell in quickly behind her.

"You intend to catch a lot of deer, or some other similarly sized animal, yes? Because I might have an appetite to match yours right now." She would have laughed at her own joke, but she really was that hungry. Having not eaten in however-many-hours, and with a previous diet almost exclusively of overly-salted pork, Elly was ravenous to the point that she might even skip the cooking step and eat the raw meat.

"I'd certainly hope this is big enough." Tohru replied. "We're almost there."

They were passing by trees that had large claw marks, bite marks, and some that had completely fallen over on their way to this mysterious destination. After a little while, past the treeline, she was able to see a large hump. She squinted in an attempt to see it more clearly, before it hit her.

It was another dragon. This one, however, wasn't breathing. There was nothing indicating it was alive, and she got a very good look at it as they approached it. Her stomach dropped in a sort of primal fear. Just because she had gotten used to Tohru's presence did not mean that dragons were not terrifying creatures.

"...I hope you are not intending for me to consume this." She finally said after a pregnant pause. "I do not wish to feast on a dragon."

"You don't have to bite it." Tohru told her, stopping some distance from the carcass. "Just go to it."

"Okay..." She was hesitating.

"It's okay, he's dead, he can't eat you." Tohru nudged her forward. "Just walk up to him."

She took a small step forward, then another, and another. A series of these led her to the corpse of the beast, a formidable sight despite the lack of life. Then, it hit her as if the dragon itself was ramming into her. Physical energy seemed to coalesce around the beast, wisps that flitted around until it seemed as if they spotted her. They lunged, driving directly into her breast, and she gasped. A rush of energy flowed right into her. Any aches, any cracks, a sore throat - all of her pains were gone. She felt as if she were reborn into a new woman. As if a sun formed inside of her and was relieving her of all of her suffering.

Except that she was still hungry. The energy finished burying itself inside of her, but her stomach was still left unfilled.

"Serves him right." Tohru muttered more to herself than for Elly's benefit. "How was it?"

"That was..." Elly took a deep breath to steady herself, the energy filling her up making her body vibrate. "I'm still hungry." She gave a pointed look toward Tohru, smiling as if she had finished laughing at a great joke.

"Oh, no wonder dragonborn are so hated." Tohru said, confounded by how a dragon soul could not be appetizing enough. "There's another one a bit to the west."

"Really? How did these get here?" She shook her head, the idea of so many dragons in one place throwing her off. "Wait, Tohru, I don't think you understand. I need actual food. This isn't filling my stomach."

"Oh!" Tohru's face lit up with understanding. "Okay, we'll catch something along the way then. No sense letting perfectly good dragon souls go to waste."

"So... I'm ingesting dragon souls?" She mumbled to herself as they began making their way toward the next one. "Father would have a conniption if he saw me right now."

* * *

 _Co-Author's Note_ : I'm looking forward to write this. I hope you are looking forward to reading it. Please continue to tell Ink and Blade what you think, because I will read the reviews too. Looking forward to your feedback.

 _Author's Note_ : This might have started as my own silly idea, but without Nogoodnms' enthusiasm and drive, it probably would have never seen the light of day, so if you enjoy the story, heap the praise on him for kicking my ass into gear so we could write this story together. With a bit of luck, this motivation will carry over into my own, long neglected projects. Until next chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Miss Nistiana's Maid Dragon**

 **Chapter 2**

Despite the prominent sunlight that beat down, the chilly air refused to acquiesce to the innate energy of heat. It staunchly stood its ground against the spears that the sun threw, and as a result, Elly was still damn cold. Her feet were aching from the constant hiking, and she was growing hungry from all the exercise. To make matters worse, she was completely alone in her misery, as Tohru seemed all too happy to bounce along, humming a cheerful tune, utterly immune to mortal plights. It's possible that it would have made her feel better if she couldn't hear the lyrics, which involved something along the lines of the end of the world, the death and destruction of all life, and screaming souls burning in the inferno.

"Tohru, those lyrics... they're a metaphor, right?"

The jubilant dragon turned to her, still smiling. "The lullaby? No, of course not, why would you think that?"

"That's a lullaby?" She stopped for a moment, reeling in shock. "I, uh... it's..." She was searching for the right words. "You sing your kids to sleep with that?"

"Yup." Tohru nodded, giving her a puzzled look. "Do mortals not have lullabies?"

"No, we do, we do." She hummed in thought for a moment. "We just sing about simple, playful ideas... stars... trees... animals. The lyrics themselves are inherently meaningless, it's only meant to help kids fall asleep."

"I guess I'd fall asleep too if I had to listen to something that boring." The dragon replied after giving it some thought. "We give our hatchlings happy thoughts to fall asleep to, like humans burning, forests burning, towns burning, elves burning…"

"Oh, really now?" She said half-sarcastically.

"Mhm! We constantly long for the days before you humans rebelled and took the land away from us." She gave a little 'eheheh' and scratched the back of her head, as if she was embarrassed about what she was saying. "Burning it all down and restarting from scratch is a common theme from our loresingers."

"That's... interesting." If interesting was the new synonym for "highly disturbing", then yes, that would be the correct word. "I think I'm going to need another shower..." She muttered under her breath, but underestimated the dragon's sensitivity.

"Already?" Tohru frowned. "Mortals sure need a lot of care."

"We're not equipped with the tools to clean ourselves," She quickly recovered, "So whenever we have the chance, we have to take it."

She actually didn't intend for it, but a second cleansing wasn't a completely awful idea. The opportunity for a bath or a shower could be rare, especially during the winter, when the many tributaries in the region could freeze.

After a quick rinse in a nearby stream, in what had to be one of the coldest baths Elly had ever taken, they had continued down the trail they were following. The next couple of hours passed in relative silence, though the forest ambience told the tale of the birds and the bees conversing with one another about the taste of certain flowers, or how their mates were not looking at them as they used to when they were but wee lads and lasses. The two's eavesdropping on these conversations was broken by a soft grumble.

"Oh, are you hungry?" Tohru perked up. "Let's go hunt something!"

"Why?" Elly pulled out a slice of her eternal companion, the salted pork. "We have everything we need for the next few days right here."

The next thing she knew, her hand was slapped away, Tohru hissing at the piece of meat now lying in the dirt.

"Ew, it has _rocks_ on it." The dragon scrunched her face up in disgust. "We're not eating that thing."

She frowned at the dragon. "I don't like having to kill more than I have to."

Tohru frowned back. "Why? It's food, it's meant to be eaten."

Elly pulled out another slice of the pork and attempted to take a small bite, but Tohru slapped it out of her hand again.

"Bad human!" The dragon scolded. "What did I just tell you?"

"I know it's awful, but I don't want to let it go to waste!" She insisted.

"It has already become waste because you put those disgusting rocks on it!"

She wasn't sure how to argue with that. The salt taste overwhelmed any remnants of the original pork fat, and she wasn't opposed to something different. Her mother had taught her not to waste food, but the dragon made a good point...

"I... guess we could just hunt for something fresh."

Before the sentence could fully escape her lips, she felt a rush of wind by her side. By the time she realized that had been Tohru, the dragon had already grappled a nearby doe that had been in the brush behind her, locking her arms around its stomach. Right in front of Elly's disbelieving eyes, Tohru arched her back and slammed the doe's head and neck into the ground behind her with a disturbingly loud snap of broken bones. With the doe dead, Tohru rose back up and flashed her a grin and a thumbs up.

"Dinner is served!" She announced happily, gesturing grandly at the carcass.

Without pause, without even thinking about it, Elly replied, "Looks delicious."

"See? I know what's best!" Tohru claimed, puffing out her chest proudly.

 _She certainly has a way of doing things that you can't really argue with_.

"Good job." She said. "I'll get to work on skinning it, and you set the fire, okay?" She felt a light smirk coming on. "From what you've told me, dragons love setting fires, don't they?"

"We're the best at it!" She replied, her eyes shining with determination.

"Well, go on then." She urged with a smile.

Elly sat down, crossing her legs as Tohru went to accomplish her own task. She took the head of the body into her lap, grimacing as she pulled her knife out, beginning to slowly take apart the animal. It was never a pleasant job, but at this point in her life she had grown more-or-less accustomed to the assignment. She hummed a light, upbeat tune as her hands and shirt slowly became more and more stained with blood, and she separated the more tasty bits of the animal from the bone and skin.

" _Yol!"_

Her thoughts were interrupted by a wave of blazing heat, with the appropriate, terrifyingly loud sound of a high level flame spell. Slowly, she turned her head to look, the appropriate horror being drawn on her face.

Tohru stood in front of a pile of ashes, which Elly assumed to have been firewood once, her lips pressed in a thin line as she surveyed the semicircle of scorched earth and burning trees, the closest of which, meaning the first three rows of the treeline, had collapsed.

For a moment, Elly held onto her composure. For that brief moment, she felt like she could react to this calmly and rationally, and communicate to Tohru why this was an issue.

A tree, flames crackling in laughter on its branches, suddenly split in two, and that was all that was needed to trigger her rage.

" _Tohruuuuuuuuuuuu!_ "

* * *

The evening was upon them, and the forest was recovering from its earlier, fiery disturbance. The conversation between flora and fauna was quieter now, though still there, but it could not nearly fill up the empty silence between the two of them.

Due to the lack of a fire, Elly had not gotten to eat a single morsel of the deer. She had stomped away in anger after her own outburst, and while she was gone Tohru had somehow consumed the whole deer, both edible and inedible portions. Thus, she was left with an even emptier stomach than before, and as if she didn't have enough reminders of that, her stomach chose that moment to provide a loud gurgle in protest of being neglected.

"Ah..." Tohru had started to make a noise, but just as soon stopped.

 _What a piece of work that dragon is, huh?_

Well, the situation was partially her own fault. She encouraged Tohru to give it her all without realizing that the dragon had never learned what the word 'restraint' meant. She really couldn't push it all onto Tohru, and therefore realized that her earlier anger wasn't all that justified. One wouldn't get angry at a cat for hunting and bringing back mice, would they? But she was having trouble approaching the topic, and thus, their current predicament continued as they walked down an ever-darkening road.

"Hey, Tohru?"

"I'm sorry." She replied instantly.

"Now, hold on, that wasn't entirely your fault." Elly protested.

"No, it was," The dragon shook her head despondently. "I got too excited by the idea of burning and I didn't think about actually making a fire."

"Just listen to me for a second, okay?"

But before Elly could continue with what she wanted to say, Tohru roughly shoved her aside and stepped around her with an arm holding onto her to keep her from moving away. As she did this, a whooshing noise passed nearby, and she spotted an axe that had lodged itself into a tree at an odd angle

"Wow, good reflexes on that one." A female voice spoke, and a group of unscrupulous-looking men and women appeared and made their way out of the treeline.

"Oh, the red-hair is a cutie." That one was a little more androgynous, but she could detect a hint of low undertone that signaled it was male, and the accent revealed him to be a Khajiit.

"They're both adorable!" This one squeaked like a small dog, probably a woman. "I could just eat them up for supper and I wouldn't even need dessert!"

"You picked the wrong night to get lost, friends," A roguishly handsome young man, whom the others subtly moved around and looked toward, stepped forward, addressing the two of them. "We don't really want to hurt you. It would be much easier if you handed over your packs and all of your valuables. That way we can just send you on your merry way, and no one comes out injured, or worse."

Tohru snarled, but before she could lunge forward to act out all those hellish fantasies she had been singing about earlier in the day, Elly grabbed onto her tunic, pulling her back.

"Hey, what's with the horns?" A scrawny Nord with a bow across his back asked warily. "I don't see a headdress and that tail looks argonian. What is this freak?"

"Hold on, _friends_ ," She moved around the dragon to look into the eyes of the leader who stepped forward, attempting to distract them from Tohru's odd appearance. "You are about to make a large mistake here. I don't want to have to hurt you either. If you walk away right now, we can forget this ever happened."

A twinkle appeared in his eye, and he laughed. "You're the third person who's said that to me in the past couple of days!" He cast an intrigued look Tohru's way. "Though none of them had such interesting company. Is that a daughter of the infamous lusty argonian maid?"

"Oh no, she's a little more special than that." She didn't let him get the chance to inquire any further. "And if you play your cards right, you won't have to find out just how special she is." She gave him a little smirk, to which he replied with in kind.

"I like your attitude. It's a shame that it's come to this." He sighed melodramatically. "I truly am sorry for this."

"So am I." She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, letting go of the dragon's tunic. "Tohru."

" _Wuld!"_

The previously smirking bandit leader was left staring blankly at the blonde woman suddenly inches away from him. His head slowly tilted down until all he could see was the arm sticking through his chest. An odd sense of detachment came over him. He opened his mouth to give a witty one-liner, but all that came forth was blood and then he knew no more.

Elly watched with a slowly growing sense of shock as her excitable, ditzy companion, who she came to view with less and less fear over time, began to rip and tear apart the bandits who had dared to stand in her way. The gore that was being flung about with such ease was beginning to horrify her, and though she had expected to provide a modicum of support, she found herself moving over to a tree and leaning against it, nausea overtaking her.

"No, please, mercy!" The only bandit left, a redguard woman who had long since dropped her shield and sword and was backing away in fright, her arms shaking as she pleaded for her life to Tohru who was turning to face her.

" _Fus Ro Dah!"_

Elly's ears rang as a wall of pressurized air slammed into the woman, blasting her body apart into a bloody mist and continuing on to dig a trench through the forest behind her. For a few seconds all was silent, before a distant boom shook the earth, the trees rattling in the aftershock.

Elly's digestive system curled and uncurled, and she attempted to expel the contents of her stomach. However, not having eaten anything in the past few hours, all that left her mouth was some spittle and bile. She leaned heavily on the tree as her body's reaction took over entirely.

"What's wrong?" Tohru appeared by her side, face contorted with worry. "Did they harm you? Are you hurt?"

"No... no, I'm alright." She said, panting heavily. "That was... awful. I didn't..."

The tension in her body refused to release. She still felt like she was on the verge of vomiting, even though she knew she had nothing to give. She couldn't stop the images of the bodies flashing before her eyes.

"But you told me to…" Tohru trailed off, dejection obvious in her voice.

Elly refrained from saying anything. There was nothing she could say, right then, that would make either of them feel better.

A long silence stretched between them as Elly searched the corpses, disgusted but resigned to the necessity of the act. She found, between the five bodies, a total of 73 gold coins, which was an decent amount for a number of mountain bandits. Her purse was jingling quite nicely at this point. Other than that, they didn't have anything that caught her attention. She considered hiding the bodies, but looking at the battlefield that Tohru had created, it would have been an exercise in futility.

They finally got a move on again, the light of the moon now reflecting off the stone path. The forest was much quieter now. The only conversation being made was the wind whispering in the ears of the trees, giggling every now and again. Elly was trying to figure out, once again, how to broach the earlier topic, but luckily, Tohru saved her the trouble.

"What did I do wrong?" The dragon asked softly. Had the night not been so silent, Elly would have hardly heard it.

"I don't blame you for what happened back there... and earlier..." She replied. "I don't think you knew what I meant both times."

"But what did I do wrong?" Tohru repeated, a pleading tinge entering her tone that Elly wasn't sure she wanted to show.

"When I asked you to make a fire, I was thinking about a small campfire." She cupped her hands together.

"I'm not talking about that." Tohru said with a meaningful stare.

"I know, but the same mistake was made." She grimaced. "I don't want you to think that I think I'm better than you, but if you're going to stick with me, you need to learn to restrain yourself."

Elly was almost expecting an angry rebuttal and a tirade on how dragons were clearly incapable of being inferior to worthless mortals, but Tohru kept watching her silently. It only served to unnerve her more.

"You need to learn to do things in proportion." She continued. "When I ask you to make a fire, I wanted a small fire that we could use to cook food. I know you're fine with eating raw meat, but I might get sick from eating that, so we need to cook our food, especially now that I don't have any more on me."

Tohru's stare gained a piercing edge that was becoming quite uncomfortable.

"What happened back there... was..." Elly was searching for the right words. "I'm not used to defending myself, so I felt confident in giving you free reign to keep us safe. But the way you killed them..." She stopped walking and finally met Tohru's gaze. "It was too much. You didn't need to do that."

"I did need to do that." Tohru replied firmly. "There's no _nice_ way of killing someone. You either do it as quickly as possible or you make them suffer. Would you rather I hesitated, played with them? What if they managed to hurt you because I decided not to take them seriously? They might have been pathetic to me, but they were a threat to _you_."

"I'm not completely defenseless, you know." She shot back. "I would have been able to take care of myself. I know they had to die, I accepted that the moment that man refused to back down. But you didn't need to tear them apart. You didn't need to blow that woman into pieces. You could have just broken their necks, or knocked each of them out quickly and then slit their throats." It was so weird to her to say those things as if they were the better options, but what had happened before had quite literally made her sick. Even these things would have been easier to deal with than the shower of gore she had experienced.

"Why? Because you'd rather feel clean than stay alive?" Tohru challenged, stepping closer and glaring down at her. "You think it makes a difference how they die? I told you, there's no nice way to kill someone. _Honor_ ," she hissed venomously before Elly could get a word in edgewise, "Has no place in a fight where your life is on the line. You think those humans would have given you mercy? An honorable death? They'd stab you in the gut and leave you to die in the dirt if I hadn't been there and forgotten about it the next day. That woman who pleaded for her life in the end you feel so bad about would have been laughing at you as you begged for yours."

"Killing them with honor is not what made me nearly vomit back there." She retorted. "It was the brutality with which you dispatched their lives." She took a breath and recentered herself. They had launched into an argument, and that's not what she wanted. She changed her tone to be less accusatory, more sympathetic. "I know that you're a dragon, I know you can kill them with ease in any way you choose. I'm not asking you to not kill them, or to fight some sort of ridiculous one-on-one duel with any enemy we encounter. I just want you to not butcher people like common cattle."

She could see a thousand responses flash in the dragon's eyes, just aching to come out and scold her idiot mortal self. In the end, Tohru took a shuddering breath and visibly calmed herself.

"Fine, I'll try to keep things 'clean'." Her distaste was evident. She pointed a warning finger at Elly. "But if I deem that holding back would be too dangerous, I'll put your safety above your feelings."

Elly nodded, and with a smile she took the hand that Tohru pointed at her with in her own two hands. "Thank you, Tohru." She said. "I appreciate it."

"You better." Tohru said, looking away. "You mortals can't be trusted to take proper care of yourselves."

* * *

"So this is what mortals do when they run into their houses?" Tohru whispered, looking around the roadside inn they stumbled upon in wonder, more specifically the handful of patrons and the innkeeper cooking their food.

Elly's face contorted itself into a number of shapes that she was having trouble associating with the many varied emotions that humans felt. "Yes, among other things." She whispered back.

"I always wondered." The dragon admitted, accidentally meeting the gaze of a Dunmer woman at the other end of the room and quickly looking somewhere else. "Mortals always seemed to love their houses. All the time they'd run inside, but then I'd just go _Yol Toor Shul_!" She imitated the stream of fire by throwing her hands forward from her chest. "And it goes poof."

Her companion pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed in deeply, then exhaled quietly. "This is why you need to let me do the talking." Elly said to her, then turned to the innkeeper behind the counter, who was looking over them with what she guessed to be amusement.

She wasn't in the mood to figure out mortal complexities. She had hidden away her tail and horns and it made walking around in a human guise vastly more uncomfortable, like a deep itch she couldn't scratch.

"You girls looking to get a room?" She asked, mirth coloring her voice.

"Yes, please. Whatever you have available is fine." Elly said.

"One bed or two?" The innkeeper's lips were flexing and unflexing rapidly. She wasn't sure what it meant, but the correct answer to the question was very clear to her.

"One please!" Tohru chimed in immediately. "Her inferior mortal body can't heat itself properly at night, so she needs my help!"

There was a pause in the exchange as Elly froze and the innkeeper covered her mouth rapidly and turned to the side, a strange squeaking noise emitting from her.

"...Two beds, please." Elly spoke after a long silence.

"But what if you get cold?" Tohru asked, tone laced with concern.

"I'm sure I'll manage." She replied dryly.

"Two beds, then." The innkeeper said, a smile still on her face for whatever reason. "If you do get cold, though, you can just pull the frames together." Her eyes flicked toward Elly. Was that a threatening gesture? It was so confusing.

Elly made some sort of noise that she assumed was an affirmative and dug a few gold coins out from one of her many pouches, placing them on the counter. The innkeeper took them down beneath the counter and pulled out a brass key, handing it to Elly.

"Hallway to your left, fourth door down." She said. "You came at a good time, dinner will be served soon. I'll come knock on your door beforehand."

Elly nodded and began walking in that direction, and she followed close behind. It had been days since they met, but Tohru still found being around a dragonborn incredibly strange. Sure, she'd encountered a few a couple millennia ago, but most of them she'd killed or scared off. Looking at Elly, she clearly saw a fragile, puny human, yet whenever she reached out with her senses, she felt the presence of a fellow dragon. It made her dizzy sometimes.

The room was small. Like most human homes, she would not have been able to fit her whole body inside of it, though her legs and torso might have fit in the dining area. There were two beds that she would be able to fit on from her head to her feet in this form, but her tail would definitely be drooping off the side of it. There was a table with a chair by the door and a nightstand by each bed, all looking boringly plain.

"I don't get it." She muttered. "Is this really what mortals run to when we attack? I thought there'd be more to it."

Elly hummed for a moment, putting down her pack next to one of the nightstands. "Inns have very bland furniture because the rooms are never occupied by the same person for very long. Our real homes are more... homely." She let herself fall onto the bed that the corresponding nightstand was next to, sighing and stretching out. "Oh, by the Nine, I've almost forgotten what a bed feels like."

Tohru frowned, confused by the obvious joy her human was deriving from the mattress. She approached the other bed and turned just like Elly had before letting herself fall onto it.

"Ooh…" Her mouth opened of its own accord, a whole new world revealing itself to her. "Ah…" She shifted herself fully up the bed and rested her head on the pillow. "Mm… So good..."

Elly chuckled. "Are you beginning to regret burning down all those houses, now?"

"It all makes sense now…" She sighed with a lazy smile, letting her horns and tail grow back. "These things are completely worth dying in a fire for." She turned on her side, resting her cheek on her palm. "You know, I never asked, but where are we going anyway?"

"I already told you," came the muffled answer from behind a pillow. "North."

Tohru gave an exasperated sigh. "North where?"

She got a sigh in return, and the irksome human turned to face her. "To the College of Winterhold. I'm looking to become a student of the Restoration magics."

"A healer?" Tohru was surprised. "You don't have the stomach for it."

Elly grimaced. "I can take apart an animal just fine, thank you very much. Watching people get torn apart right in front of my eyes is not something I'm used to," she gave a small smile at that point, "But with you around I think I'll acclimate to it very fast."

"I can leave some of them alive for you to fix if you want." She suggested nonchalantly.

Elly shook her head. "No, I don't want to waste mana on them. They're not worth the effort."

"I'm not saying to let them live." She scoffed. "I'd dispose of them after, but it's better if you practice on people you don't mind dying if you fail, right?"

"Mm..." Her companion turned to face the ceiling. "Maybe." The only sound that hung in the air was the sound of their breathing.

"You did a good job with me, though." Tohru broke the silence, offering an encouraging smile. "I'm sure you'll do great."

"Thanks." She got a smile in return. "You think you'll be able to handle yourself in a place like a mage's college?"

"I'm not some beast, you know." She replied reproachfully. "I guess I might as well take the opportunity to see how you mortals do magic."

"I hope you'll find it as _magical_ as I do." She snorted, and Elly let out a small chirp.

"You're making me regret not eating you." Tohru couldn't quite keep the grin off her face.

"You only have yourself to blame for that." Before Tohru could respond indignantly to that, there was a knock at the door.

"Dinner is being served in five minutes." The innkeeper's voice carried through the door.

"Thank you!" Elly replied, looking at her again. "Are you as hungry as I am?"

Tohru took a moment to weigh her hunger against her desire to stay in her bed forever. "Not really, but the sooner I eat, the sooner I can lie down again."

"That's the spirit."

* * *

 _Author's Note:_ I was told by Nogoodnms to write a good author's note while he went to the bathroom. Unfortunately for him, I'm no good at it. Writing this story is a blast, even though we barely scrape by the time to do it. We intended to make this completely wholesome and happy, but since we're both depressing edgelords, this is what you get. That's not to say this will be an angst ridden, one-way trip to Pain City, but we just can't bring ourselves to make the trip to Happy Fun Land either.

 _Co-author's Note:_ Like he said, this is honestly one of the hardest things I've had to write. But the fact of the matter is that this is something that I feel is worth sharing, and I'm going to pull this asshole along with me for the whole ride. We have plans for what comes in the future of our two protagonists, it's just hard to walk there. Please continue to follow, favorite, and review, because (and lord knows you hear this far too much and you're goddamn sick of it) it really does pick up our spirits whenever we see one and it does help us get our shit together and write twelve more words every week.

And now, for something completely different.

* * *

"You know, Tohru," Elly said, looking at her intently. "I may lack horns, but I'm just as horny as you are. Let's fuck."

Tohropotomus nodded intently. "I like the cut of your jib. Let's do it."

They fucked. Alduin blew up the world, but it's okay, Elly got some of that dragon pootang.

ENDING L - Dragon [L]over


	3. Important Notice

**PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE**

 **IMPORTANT NOTIC** **E** **:** Ink and Blade here. I'm sad to announce that this story is dead. Due to a regrettable falling out with nogoodnms, there's no chance of the collab continuing. I've spent some time debating whether to try and continue the story on my own because of its warm reception, but I'm afraid that it wouldn't be the same and that it'd be disrespectful to use nogoodnms' character (Nistiana) in his absence. Most of the joy of this project came from bouncing ideas, working around each other's writing and shitposting in the document comments as we went, so whatever I ended up doing couldn't possibly recreate that.

Since there's a rule against posting notifications, I've appended a draft of the previous chapter. Until next time.

* * *

 **Miss Nistiana's Maid Dragon**

 **Chapter 2 Draft  
**

Despite the prominent sunlight that beat down, the chilly air refused to acquiesce to the innate energy of heat. It staunchly stood its ground against the spears that the sun threw, and as a result, Elly was still damn cold. Her feet were aching from the constant hiking and she was growing hungry again from all the exercise. To make matters worse, she was completely alone in her misery, as Tohru seemed all too happy to bounce along, humming a cheerful tune, utterly immune to mortal plights. It's possible that it would have made her feel better if she couldn't hear the lyrics, which involved something like the end of the world, the death and destruction of all life, and screaming souls burning in the inferno.

"Tohru, I'm very curious as to where you learned a song like that." She internally cringed at her inability to form words outside of the cold formality she used with most people. Despite all the progress their relationship had made over the past couple days, testing the limits was always a painful yet necessary process.

"Oh, that?" The jubilant dragon said, still smiling. "It's a lullaby my mother used to sing to me when I was a hatchling."

"I see..." She really didn't know what to say to that. "Is it... common in dragon culture to pine after the end of all living things?"

"Mhm! We constantly long for the days before you mortals rebelled and took the land away from us." She gave a little 'eheheh' and scratched the back of her head, as if she was embarrassed about what she was saying. "Burning it all down and restarting from zero is a societal fantasy of ours."

Elly was quickly finding out to be true that dragons, despite their vaunted wisdom, did not make the best conversationalists. There was not much common ground between her and this aged master of the cosmos, but at least Tohru was willing to work with her sensibilities. Last night, in particular, revealed an interesting aspect of their relationship.

* * *

"What, exactly, are you doing?" Elly managed to choke out through her clenched jaw that was most definitely due to the cold and _not_ due to the situation at hand.

"Warming you up!" Came the reply from the dragon-in-human-form who had unceremoniously wrapped herself around her human charge. "Your inferior mortal form seemed to be having trouble dealing with the weather, so I'm generously offering you my body to help." Quite literally, as her companion was completely in the buff, which only made the situation more uncomfortable.

"I..." Okay, she wasn't quite prepared for this. It was different when they had first met, as then she had been protected from the wind by a beast that was higher than twice her father stacked on top of himself. The dragon understood the idea of modesty, as she wore clothes during the day, but personal space was a concept outside of her realm of thinking, it seemed. "Tohru, I appreciate the offer, but this is... a little too much for me right now."

"Oh, it's too warm?" Tohru asked, pinching Elly's robe. "Let's get rid of this, then."

"No, no, no." This had to be stopped in its tracks right away. "I mean the fact that you're in my bed roll with me. We're not..." The words were having trouble being formed again, out of embarrassment more than anything.

"Not…?" Tohru tilted her head curiously.

"Not... together!" It was so hard to say it without coming off as uncouth. Demeanor must be maintained. "Only people who are together with one another sleep with one another."

"But we are together." The dragon frowned in confusion. "We're a wing now."

"No, I mean..." She huffed in frustration and looked at the stars. "...together as if we were lovers." She felt so uncomfortable just saying that. Her tongue was not meant to use that word with anyone else but her own lover. She squeezed her eyes shut. What a strange situation she landed herself in.

"Ah…" Tohru nodded slowly before rolling on her back to look at the sky herself. "You mortals are really strange."

A long silence stretched while Elly's brain churned, her eyes refusing to look in the direction of her companion. This was... better than before, in a sense. She was less cold, certainly, but she was very uncomfortable with the idea of a very beautiful young woman wrapping herself around her. But... the warmth.

"...Please put the robes back on. That's all I ask of you." An internal compromise was reached. She did not necessarily _want_ Tohru to stay, but she wasn't going to say no to what amounted to free heat.

"Alright!" Tohru agreed immediately, robes appearing on her without fanfare, and shuffled back to Elly's side.

Elly wasn't sure how the almighty dragon she met a few days ago ended up cuddling next to her as a human heater, and she definitely was lost on how to feel about it all.

* * *

After a quick wash in a nearby stream, they had continued down the trail they were following. Elly's compass told them it went north, and with Winterhold being in that general direction, it wasn't that difficult of a decision to make as to where to go. All she could do was follow the signs, as she didn't stop long enough to grab a map at any point. Perhaps they would have one at the next inn they visited.

The next couple of hours passed in relative silence, though the forest ambience told the tale of the birds and the bees conversing with one another about the taste of certain flowers, or how their mates were not looking at them as they used to when they were but wee lads and lasses. The two's eavesdropping on these conversations was broken by a soft grumble.

"Mmm..." Elly groaned quietly. "I suppose it's time for another slice of euphoria." She began digging around in her pack to find a few chops of her tongue's personal hell.

Tohru tilted her head and sniffed the air. Her suspicions were confirmed once Elly drew her hand out.

"Hey, look, a sabrecat!"

Elly jumped in fright, turning on her heels, her eye darting along the treeline for the sabrecat. It was only a few moments later that she realized that the sabrecat was not there. And neither was the salted pork. She grimaced at Tohru.

"You are intent on providing lunch, then?" She asked quietly, resigned yet relieved at the thought of another day without the pork.

"Since your inferior humanity is preventing you from feeding yourself properly, it falls to me, the great Tohrusan, to do it for you." The dragon said with an all too obvious smirk. "Aha, our lunch is here!"

Elly barely had time to see the doe in the direction she had pointed before she felt a rush of wind by her side. By the time she realized that had been Tohru, the dragon had already grappled the doe from behind, locking her arms around its stomach. Right in front of Elly's disbelieving eyes, Tohru arched her back and slammed the doe's head and neck into the ground behind her with a disturbingly loud snap of broken bones. With the doe dead, Tohru rose back up and flashed her a grin and a thumbs up.

"Ahh... ahh..." The social evolution that allowed humans to form thoughts into language had been completely reversed by what she had just witnessed. It took her a few moments to compose herself, in the process taking deep breaths to calm herself.

"Tohru..." Her quiet voice now seemed to have a little more backbone to it. "Please let me know next time you're about to break my perception of how a human body is supposed to operate." Another breath. "Can you get a fire going?"

Tohru looked at her with something approaching disbelief. "I am a dragon."

"Right, that question does seem redundant, now that I've asked it." She mumbled to herself. "Hand me the deer so I can skin it while you get us a small fire going."

After having taken the heavy carcass from Tohru, she put it down on the ground and pulled out her skinning knife. It was never a pleasant job, but she was lucky that her father was willing at all to give her skills like these, as, of course, a noble daughter of her stature should never have to get her hands dirty. She ruminated on what it meant to be a woman in the upper classes as her hands and shirt slowly became more and more stained with blood, and she separated the more tasty bits of the animal from the bone and skin.

" _Yol!"_

Her thoughts were interrupted by a wave of blazing heat, with the appropriate, terrifyingly loud sound of a high level flame spell. Slowly, she turned her head to look, the appropriate horror being drawn on her face.

Tohru stood in front of a pile of ashes, which Elly assumed to have been the firewood once, her lips pressed in a thin line as she surveyed the semicircle of scorched earth and burning trees, the closest of which, meaning the first three rows of the treeline, had collapsed.

For a moment, Elly held onto her composure. For a brief moment, she felt like she could react to this calmly and rationally, and communicate to Tohru why this was an issue. Then, a burning tree fell down in the forest, and she was very nearby to hear it.

" _Tohruuuuuuuuuuuu!_ "

* * *

The evening was upon them, and the forest was recovering from its earlier, fiery disturbance. The conversation between flora and fauna was quieter now, though still there, but it could not nearly fill up the empty silence between the two of them.

Elly was, to put it lightly, uncomfortable. The silence had stretched on at this point for far too long, and if this was going to be a long-term partnership (which, in her mind, she already had accepted as a given), then there couldn't be any awkwardness between them.

"Tohrusan." She had reverted to a more formal tone, even more so than her usual inability to talk relaxedly without decorum. There was a large wall between them right now that needed to be deconstructed, but this had to be done slowly, with an intent as to how exactly to break it down.

"Y-Yes?" Tohru squeaked, startled by the sudden address. "I mean, yes, mortal, what is it?"

Her stuttered reply threw Elly off for a moment. There was no way a dragon would actually be feeling uncomfortable about offending a mortal, would they?

"I... wanted to apologize for earlier." She said hesitantly. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

Tohru seemed to have recovered, and nodded resolutely. "Mhm, that's right. It's not my fault mortals are so tiny and fragile and need really small fires."

Elly took in a deep breath, trying to restrain herself from the impulsive reply that would leave them biting at each other. She had to play to the dragon's pride here. She could turn this around. "I was just hoping, back there, that the great Tohrusan would use that chance to show off her excellent control over fire. I'm sure it's very easy for any dragon to burn down a forest, but it would have impressed me even more had you managed to contain yourself and made a small campfire."

Tohru bit the inside of her cheek and looked away. Elly could sense that the prideful dragon wanted to say something in return, but she knew she could tip this conversation in her favor if she pressed on.

"I have nothing against you being so eager to please," She continued in an almost praiseworthy tone. "In fact, I appreciate it more than you know. But it would make me much happier if you were to keep that fire burning inside of you, saving it for when we really need it." She stopped and turned to her companion, placing her hand on the dragon's shoulder. "I want you to show me what you can do when we need it most."

Tohru stared at her for a long moment, eyes dulled in confusion, before she finally broke out in a grin. "Right! The great Tohrusan never disappoints! That was a mere one word Shout! Just you wait until I release the full power of _Yol Toor Shul_!"

Elly cringed, expecting to be burnt into ashes in the next second, but no fire came. She smiled, somewhat uncomfortably. "But you won't be doing that when it's not necessary, right? You understand that you are not supposed to overdo it?"

"Pfft, of course." Tohru puffed out her chest, stretching the robes near to their breaking point. "I'm the great Tohrusan."

She nodded in reply and brought her hand back to her side, continuing to walk down the path. "That's right, the greatest dragon of them all." It was almost as if she were talking to a child. She would repay Tohru's kindness by helping her grow into a proper adult dragon that would blend in easily with the human world.

* * *

"So this is what mortals do when they run into their houses?" Tohru whispered, looking around Kynesgrove Inn in wonder, more specifically the handful of patrons and the innkeeper cooking their food.

Elly's face contorted itself into a number of shapes that she was having trouble associating with the many varied emotions that humans felt. "Yes, among other things." She whispered back.

"I always wondered." The dragon admitted, accidentally meeting the gaze of a Dunmer woman at the other end of the room and quickly looking somewhere else. "Mortals always seemed to love their houses. All the time they'd run inside, but then I'd just go _Yol Toor Shul_!" She imitated the stream of fire by throwing her hands forward from her chest. "And it goes poof."

Her companion pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed in deeply, then exhaled quietly. "Please restrain yourself for a few moments." Elly said to her, then turned to the innkeeper behind the counter, who was looking over them with what she guessed to be amusement.

She wasn't in the mood to figure out mortal complexities. She had hidden away her tail and horns and it made walking around in a human guise vastly more uncomfortable, like a deep itch she couldn't scratch.

"You girls looking to get a room?" She asked, mirth coloring her voice.

"Yes please. Whatever you have available is fine." Elly said.

"One bed or two?" The innkeeper's lips were flexing and unflexing rapidly. She wasn't sure what it meant, but the correct answer to the question was very clear to her.

"One please!" Tohru chimed in immediately. "Her inferior mortal body can't heat itself properly at night, so she needs my help!"

There was a pause in the exchange as Elly froze and the innkeeper covered her mouth rapidly and turned to the side, a strange squeak emitting from her.

"...Two beds, please." Elly spoke after a long silence.

"But what if you get cold?" Tohru asked, tone laced with concern.

"I'm sure I'll manage." She replied dryly.

"Two beds, then." The innkeeper said, a smile still on her face for whatever reason. "If you do get cold, though, you can just pull the frames together." Her eyes flicked toward Elly. Was that a threatening gesture? It was so confusing.

Elly made some sort of noise that she assumed was an affirmative and dug a couple of gold coins from her pocket, placing them on the counter. The innkeeper took them down beneath the counter and pulled out a brass key, handing it to Elly.

"Hallway to your left, fourth door down." She said. "Dinner will be served in an hour."

Elly nodded and began walking in that direction, and she followed close behind. It had been days since they met, but Tohru still found being around a dragonborn incredibly strange. Sure, she'd encountered a few, millennia ago, but most of them she'd killed or scared off. Looking at Elly, she clearly saw a fragile, puny human, yet whenever she reached out with her senses, she felt the presence of a fellow dragon. It made her dizzy sometimes.

The room was small. Like most human homes, she would not have been able to fit her whole body inside of it, though her legs and torso might have fit in the dining area. There were two beds that she would be able to fit on from her head to her feet in this form, but her tail would definitely be drooping off the side of it. There was a table with a chair by the door and a nightstand by each bed, all looking boringly plain.

"I don't get it." She muttered. "Is this really what mortals run to when we come? I thought there'd be more to it."

Elly hummed for a moment, putting down her pack next to one of the nightstands. "Inns have very bland furniture because the rooms are never occupied by the same person for very long. Most houses are personalized in some way. We like to hang things on our walls." She let herself fall onto the bed that the corresponding nightstand was next to, sighing and stretching out. "Oh, sweet Mara, I've almost forgotten what a bed feels like."

Tohru frowned, confused by the obvious joy her human was deriving from the mattress. She approached the other bed and turned just like Elly had before letting herself fall onto it.

"Ooh…" Her mouth opened of its own accord, a whole new world revealing itself to her. "Ah…" She shifted herself fully up the bed and rested her head on the pillow. "Mm… So good..."

Elly chuckled. "Are you beginning to regret burning down all those houses, now?"

"It all makes sense now…" She sighed with a lazy smile, letting her horns and tail grow back. "These things are completely worth dying in a fire for."

"Why don't you try using it?" Elly asked. "Take some time to rest. I won't do anything or go anywhere without you."

"If you insist!" In a flash, she bounced off the soft, soft goodness beneath her, made her clothes disappear and ripped the covers out from under herself to wrap herself up in before she even landed. Cocooned safely, she spared her human one last glance. "Good night."

She heard a few steps, and then a hand placed itself on her head and caressed the area between her horns. "Sleep tight."

Tohru purred softly, the sound a deep, low thrum. She hadn't felt this comfortable in ages. Who knew a mortal of all things could make her feel this way? Perhaps this was the true power of a dragonborn.

* * *

Elly was not one to break a promise, and as such did not leave the room apart from a need to use the washroom to relieve and refresh herself momentarily. She spent her time practicing her spell ward, trying to make it larger across than a watermelon's length. It wasn't very effective as a shield right now, it more required the precision of constantly parrying spells rather than an easy defensive wall to set up.

After what felt like an hour, she heard a light knocking on the door.

"Dinner is being served," the voice of the innkeeper carried softly through the door.

"Thank you, we'll be there soon." She replied in what felt like a whispered shout. Time to wake up her companion. She walked over to the sleeping form of Tohru and gave it a little shake where she assumed the shoulder was.

"Time to wake up, Tohru." She said. "Dinner's being served."

A definitely-not-human growl answered her, followed by a bit of shuffling as Tohru curled up tighter. She shook the dragon a little more roughly this time. It felt like trying to wake up her cat back home. Tohru growled louder this time, but didn't seem any more awake than before. Elly had to consider her circumstances for a moment, the proverb about poking a sleeping dragon coming to mind and warning her against doing anything more, but she'd be damned if Tohru left in the middle of the night to hunt and ended up revealing herself to some innocent bystander.

Another shake. "You're going to get to sleep more later, so get up already."

A deep rumble shook the foundations of the inn, causing her knees to shake and for her to lose her balance, and a couple of red eyes glared out from within the bundle of sheets. " _Who dares disturb my rest?"_

She regained control of herself quickly and fixed the eyes with a glare. "Tohru, get up or Divines help me I will force you out."

" _No."_ Tohru's eyes stared up challengingly. " _This is my home now."_

 _Thank you for reading._

 _Ink and Blade_


End file.
